© John S. Dykes
This Halloween, the United Nations declared over the summer, a baby will be born somewhere on Earth who will tip the world's population over seven billion for the first time. Truly do international bureaucrats have the power of prophecy!
The precision is bunk, of course, or rather a public-relations gimmick. According to demographers, nobody knows the exact population of the world to within 100 million. (Incidentally, the record-setting baby will not be the seven billionth human being to have existed, as some press reports have implied - more like the 108 billionth.)
Nonetheless, the occasion will provide an excuse for yet another round of Malthusian gnashing of teeth about overpopulation. But we shouldn't let it obscure the real story of the past 50 years, which is not how much faster than expected, but how much slower, population has been growing.
In the 1960s, some experts feared an exponentially accelerating population explosion, and in 1969, the State Department envisaged 7.5 billion people by the year 2000. In 1994, the United Nations' medium estimate expected the seven-billion milestone to arrive around 2009. Compared with most population forecasts made in the past half century, the world keeps undershooting.
Comment: It sounds like another round of bastardizing the protestors. People are angry and if you can undermine the movement from the inside, by having police infiltrate the movement, you can stir up further anger by being the first to cross the line (throw an object, strike out at police). While this may not be the case, since people need little coaxing after Scott Olsen was injured, it's certainly a possibility. The media will always take the side of Industry, Corporatism and socially engineered society. They create perception management and help us to conclude their view is the only correct one.